Ethics and the Event in Deleuze, Derrida, and Badiou By Christopher Jason Davies Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy December, 2013 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: David Wood, Ph.D. Charles E. Scott, Ph.D. Lisa Guenther, Ph.D. François Raffoul, Ph.D. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A dissertation is not merely an academic exercise. Because of the work, time, and thinking it reflects, it is also the record of a difficult struggle, as much physical as intellectual. Thanks are due to all those who were there with me to make it easier. I must first of all thank David Wood for his ability to be both critical and supportive, as well as for allowing my thinking to go its own way. I am also grateful to Charles Scott, Lisa Guenther, and François Raffoul for their advice, questions, and for their teaching. Thanks are also due to my parents for being unquestioningly supportive of what I was doing without needing to understand or agree with it. I thank Joshua Hall for his many provocations over many beers. And I thank Ali for loving me despite the circumstances. i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................. i Chapter I. Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 A Sketch of the Project .........................................................................................................1 Events in the History of Ethics .............................................................................................4 Secondary Literature ...........................................................................................................24 Plan of the Work .................................................................................................................49 Notes ...................................................................................................................................55 II. Deleuze's Ethics of the Event: Ethology, Haecceity, and Mime .........................................59 Introduction .........................................................................................................................59 Ethics and Morality .............................................................................................................60 Deleuze's Concept of the Event ..........................................................................................66 Counter-Actualization .........................................................................................................72 The Art of Mime .................................................................................................................75 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................78 Notes ...................................................................................................................................80 III. Derrida's Ethics of the Event: Deconstruction and Turbulence ..........................................83 Introduction .........................................................................................................................83 Deconstruction ....................................................................................................................85 Derrida on Events ...............................................................................................................96 The Imperative ..................................................................................................................109 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................111 Notes .................................................................................................................................113 IV. Heroism, Immortality, and the Event in Badiou's Ethics .................................................115 Introduction .......................................................................................................................115 Badiou and Platonism .......................................................................................................116 Ontology and Logic of the Event ......................................................................................117 Fidelity ..............................................................................................................................124 Mathematical Heroism and Materialist Immortality.........................................................132 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................143 Notes .................................................................................................................................145 V. The Detachment of the Event: Beyond Stoicism ..............................................................148 Introduction .......................................................................................................................148 The Triad and the Tradition ..............................................................................................149 Stoic Ethical Thought .......................................................................................................152 Heidegger and Ereignis.....................................................................................................160 Divergences and Convergences ........................................................................................174 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................192 Notes .................................................................................................................................194 VI. The Reconfiguration of Ethics: Post-Evental Cartography and An-ethics .......................197 Introduction .......................................................................................................................197 The Nature of Ethics .........................................................................................................198 On Post-Evental Cartography ...........................................................................................201 Three Cases of Post-Evental Cartography ........................................................................207 Some Differences ..............................................................................................................212 From Meillassoux to An-Ethics ........................................................................................215 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................227 Notes .................................................................................................................................229 VII. General Conclusion: Inversions .......................................................................................232 Notes ................................................................................................................................236 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................237 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A Sketch of the Project The rethinking of ethics and the ethical has occupied a number of twentieth century philosophers from Moore and Ayer to Habermas and Foucault,1 and it falls to their readers to determine the motivations, shape, and outcome of that rethinking. For the lineage of thinkers influenced by Heidegger—Deleuze, Derrida, and Badiou chief among them—a concern with what is alternately called 'the event,' 'an event,' or 'events' constitutes an important site for the reconfiguration of ethics. To determine the motivations, shape, and outcome of the rethinking of ethics enacted by this lineage would require studying Deleuze, Derrida, and Badiou together rather than in isolation from each other. However, no such study of that sort has yet been produced. A specific type of investigation would be needed to determine the general features of the thinking of the event and of ethics found in Deleuze, Derrida, and Badiou. Its basic methodological move of would be to interrelate the three philosophers somehow, drawing comparisons and contrasts between them. The central concern of the investigation would have to be what the three thinkers, taken together, suggest about the character of the event and what that character means for the nature, status, and purview of ethical philosophy. It would need to outline what their work means both for one's sense of one's ethical life and for one's sense of what ethical inquiry is about. So, the investigation would need to examine how Deleuze, Derrida, 1 and Badiou each think the event and its relation to ethics, then draw together those ways of thinking and consider where it is that they lead or in what direction they point. To accomplish these ends, the chapters below begin by studying Deleuze, Derrida, and Badiou individually, delineating each of their conceptions of the event and its bearing on their